“Your true name is written here. Tattooed on your heart. You don’t let just anyone read it.”

And most importantly, you don’t spill it out randomly to a girl you might or might not have a crush on while there are three other random people around, no matter how excited you are about horse-riding with her.

OVERALL

9/10

BASICALLY

The Demon in the Wood is a short (and by ‘short’, I mean it’s SHORT) story about the Darkling as a thirteen-year-old boy.

It is implied that this is not the first time he and his mother encounter tragedy because of their identities and it will not be the last as he goes on with his life.

Reading the Shadow and Bone trilogy before picking this up is recommended.

SO

This book is a great addition to the Grishaverse collection – dark, quick-paced, and with suspenseful action scenes.

*SPOILERS

Before the shadows, the Darkling is just a boy who frowns at onions and loves sweet treats like any child his age.

There are many ultra-adorable yet, at the same time, tragic moments in the book that make you wonder what would have happened if a few things here and there had been dealt with differently – if Baghra had not been forced to teach her son how cruel the world is to Grisha, and how they must respond with the same cruelty, and if the first friend the Darkling makes hadn’t tried to knock him dead with a rock and go after his bones (literally).

Of course, if things had happened differently, we would not have gotten Shadow and Bone and all those zoom calls between the Darkling and Alina, so… all right, I see the point.